Blizzard has revealed that the Legendary item soft cap has been removed a week ago, allowing bad luck protection to continue once players acquired more than four legendaries. This change wasn't noticed by players sooner as many of the players at softcap were pushing progression in Trial of Valor.

WatcherDev

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Let's talk a bit about legendaries.

From the beginning of Legion, we've deliberately been pretty tight-lipped about how obtaining them works, because the best thing you can do to get them really does just boil down to "play the game and do the max-level activities you enjoy most." It was meant to be a background universal reward that would occasionally offer a surge of power to complement the transparent and omnipresent Artifact and normal itemization systems. Obviously, as we sit here reading posts speculating whether it's better to delete unwanted legendaries to improve your chances of getting more, there's a lesson for us to learn from how that approach has played out. (PS: Don't delete your legendaries. The system looks at what you've gotten, not what you have.)

We've also been pretty conservative in our design, with the intent of loosening the reins as time went on. With a system of this scale that spans all max-level activities, we couldn't be certain that we'd tuned it correctly based on data from thousands of people playing our beta for a few hours a week; it'd inevitably be different in the live game with millions of people playing in far more focused ways. And we knew that if we erred on the side of legendaries being too common, we could easily end up in a situation where some people (whether lucky people, or those who played the most) were flooded with them. If that happened, it'd have been a mess - a chunk of the playerbase would've had bags full of legendary items and no more to look forward to for months to come, and if we'd tried to "fix" it after the fact, then everyone who hadn't taken advantage of the generous period would have felt forever behind.

So we started out stingy, since if we erred in that direction it would be far more fixable. (We've since increased legendary drop rates in general, in patch 7.1). We also put some measures in place to reduce the gap between the very luckiest player and the unluckiest player. Luck is inevitably a factor in games like this, but with millions of people playing the game, if we allowed pure randomness to go unchecked, there would inevitably be some players who played hours every week and literally never saw a single legendary item. Thus, the so-called "bad luck protection" that improves your chances a bit each time you could have gotten a legendary but failed to do so.

As its name suggests, the "bad luck protection" system exists to protect the unluckiest players from the cruel fate of the dice. Those who were on the other end of the spectrum in terms of good fortune, we figured, didn't need a system to help put them even farther ahead of the rest of the world. And we drew that line at 4 legendaries, initially, planning to raise it as time went on. Once you'd gotten 4, you could absolutely get more, but the invisible hand of "bad luck protection" would no longer help you. Almost by definition, if you had 4 legendaries in, say, early October, you were super-lucky. You didn't need help getting more.

What we genuinely did not anticipate was just how much some of the very most dedicated players would play, mainly in pursuit of Artifact Power. By mid-November, we started to hear questions about whether there was some sort of 4-legendary limit, and we realized that there existed a group of players that had done so much content that they actually had an expected legendary count of around 4. They hadn't needed to be unusually lucky to get there. (Note that this is a very small group. They're overrepresented in these discussions, because this issue concerns them, but we're talking about hundreds of people out of millions.)

So we removed that soft cap just over a week ago. "Bad luck protection" now applies indefinitely. Most of the players in this category have probably been focusing on Mythic Trial of Valor for the past week, and since wiping repeatedly to raid bosses during progress sadly can't award legendaries, they haven't had a chance to see the effects of the change just yet. If/when some players get to a point when they have every legendary available for their spec, then so be it. They certainly will have earned it, and there will be more coming in future patches. The Unique-Equipped limit keeps the power gap between the haves and have-nots reasonable, and we'll continue to adjust the effectiveness of the outlier legendaries (coming up in patch 7.1.5) with the goal of keeping them exciting but not gamebreaking.

Kommentare

Kommentar von Emberlock

on 2016-11-24T11:37:04-06:00

The change was done too late imo.

Kommentar von Azyra

on 2016-11-24T11:43:18-06:00

The change was done too late imo.

Too late for what? The expansion has only been out for a few months, you're not exactly losing out on a lot if you already had 4 legendaries and now they changed it so you can more easily get even more than 4... I feel lucky just to have 3 overall (2 on main, 1 on alt) and they're all !@#$ty ones. Meanwhile our guilds off-tank has 5 already (he got 2 at the start with the bug).

Kommentar von Emolock

on 2016-11-24T11:47:39-06:00

At least it Was removed :>

Kommentar von Nishan

on 2016-11-24T11:49:48-06:00

Soft cap seems to be a misnomer here. it's not that they were preventing you from getting more than 4, it was that they stopped guaranteeing you get them after 4. but the community had decided there was a soft-cap so I can see why you would keep calling it that.

Kommentar von Lyzoldas

on 2016-11-24T11:50:20-06:00

Still feels horrible to be so dedicated to my raid team and only have 1 and only because they raised the chance in 7.1. I can't even risk switching my loot spec off of Holy for fear of getting a Legendary for another spec I don't raid with, but it also prevents me from switching specs if I choose to.

Kommentar von TheOldBear

on 2016-11-24T11:50:49-06:00

Eh. Cool? Now the one person in my guild who has like 5 can have 6?

Kommentar von BulmaRO

on 2016-11-24T11:52:14-06:00

Gotta Catch 'Em All

Kommentar von Shadowloot

on 2016-11-24T11:52:54-06:00

Har, a second one would be nice by now.Or two that are not as bad as the first one would be even nicer...

Kommentar von Didikillyou

on 2016-11-24T11:55:05-06:00

I can't even get any....and other can earn more than 4? Thanks blizz...I could wear 2 for 1,5 months..atleast can got nothing to wear...fix the luck, the unluckiest players don't care about the caps... :/

Kommentar von johnnyrizzle

on 2016-11-24T11:59:53-06:00

I can't even get any....and other can earn more than 4?

If you did 1500 Mythic+ runs you'd have 4 as well.

Kommentar von Verethora

on 2016-11-24T12:01:32-06:00

As its name suggests, the "bad luck protection" system exists to protect the unluckiest players from the cruel fate of the dice. Those who were on the other end of the spectrum in terms of good fortune, we figured, didn't need a system to help put them even farther ahead of the rest of the world. And we drew that line at 4 legendaries, initially, planning to raise it as time went on. Once you'd gotten 4, you could absolutely get more, but the invisible hand of "bad luck protection" would no longer help you. Almost by definition, if you had 4 legendaries in, say, early October, you were super-lucky. You didn't need help getting more.

... Okay, what about few of my guildies who have played every day since release for minimum of 4 to maximum of 12 hours doing M+, WQ and stuff and still hasn't seen a single one. Or me who got 1 legendary on my demon hunter which was 'okay' and the %^&*ty Sephuz on my WW monk and have never seen 2nd one drop on any of them even after doing atleast 20-30 M+'es a week, doing emissary's and clearing EN on LFR, NM and HC every week....... I have 7x 110lv at this moment and have been doing the emissary on each and every one every single day while got legendary only on DH and Monk and that was quite a while ago...

Conclusion: Is Blizzard trying to throw dirt in our eyes to try and make us think that "the bad luck protection" system exists let alone works?

I have a friend who got 2 legendaries with the "bug" and 2 more after they fixed the bug... He is not doing M+ or emissary's, at most he does his LFR and the occasional NM/HC EN clear...

Kommentar von johnnyrizzle

on 2016-11-24T12:02:14-06:00

Kinda disappointing to see so many of the wow news sites claiming you can now get more than 4 Legendaries. I mean, the blue post is pretty explicit:

Once you'd gotten 4, you could absolutely get more, but the invisible hand of "bad luck protection" would no longer help you.

Bad luck protection not helping you to acquire legendaries is absolutely fundamentally different to there being a limit on legendary items you can acquire.

Kommentar von Zombby

on 2016-11-24T12:05:35-06:00

Legendaries should be rare and should be seen as exceptional items not as "required to perform well" items.

At least they have retained (for now?) the limit on equipping two but IMO Blizz have got this one wrong as the items add so much power they distort things if you don't have them and that's graphically shown by posts like this where some people who don't have two think they are being hard done by.

Kommentar von Wolrajh

on 2016-11-24T12:10:03-06:00

Gating potentially game-changing legendaries behind RNG, even with any kind of "protection", is pretty stupid from the start. We are a dedicated team of 5 players running essentially mythic+ and we barely achieved the 1 legendary per player recently ( with one player getting the "first" second a few days ago ). We all do our WQ, we are all near or past rank 34 for our weapon, etc.The funny thing is that we wear them only because of the stat boosts, as we all got a "lame" one. Our frost DK even got a Unholy specific item. I was almost the "luckiest" for getting Sephuz's Secret as a prot warrior.

Some of the previewed legendaries sound so stupidly overpowered I could easily imagine guilds recruiting based on the candidate having them or not, and the whole system basically falling appart. Not to mention the boost to ilevel which widdens the gap between players even further, especially with passive ilvl scaling like magically going from 895 to 910.

At this point, the best course of action would probably be to introduce some kind of quest that would ensure a player can get to choose one specific legendary for their class, making it a choice and not a double luck event ( get a legendary, get the "right" one" ). Maybe throw that quest again once in a while to help soften the bad RNG deal some of us can get...

Anyway, congrats for lucky players. Enjoy getting more and more legendaries. After all, there is still the limit of 2 worn legendaries per character...

Kommentar von Getlow

on 2016-11-24T12:18:39-06:00

Kinda disappointing to see so many of the wow news sites claiming you can now get more than 4 Legendaries. I mean, the blue post is pretty explicit: Once you'd gotten 4, you could absolutely get more, but the invisible hand of "bad luck protection" would no longer help you.

Bad luck protection not helping you to acquire legendaries is absolutely fundamentally different to there being a limit on legendary items you can acquire.

I think u misunderstood something..."So we removed that soft cap just over a week ago. "Bad luck protection" now applies indefinitely." That means now bad luck protection applies to legendaries after u get your 4th one. Which is great news for ppl with alot of free time.

Kommentar von StreetKing

on 2016-11-24T12:23:26-06:00

The thing is some people - example: me - play since the start of the expansion for at least 6 hours a day every day and still havent gotten a single legendary. What is their statement on that?

Kommentar von ThalosS

on 2016-11-24T12:27:54-06:00

Please remove or update this sentence since it's misleading. It was always possible to gain more than four, it's just that the luck protection would not increase your chances after the fourth and you'd be back to the base drop rate of whatever it may be.

Blizzard has revealed that the Legendary item soft cap has been removed a week ago, allowing players to earn more than four legendaries on a particular character.

Kommentar von Nerrevar

on 2016-11-24T12:30:07-06:00

I can confirm that people with no legendaries also have their softcap removed.

Kommentar von Zarcelito

on 2016-11-24T12:40:41-06:00

Such long and boring explanation just to justify this elitism?

Kommentar von dudu2k

on 2016-11-24T12:54:27-06:00

Very funny to read the word "earned" in this.I have friends that played way less than me with 2-3 legendaries, while I have one.And the one I have, according to various sources, is worse than a 845 item, so I don't even use it.

Luck based drops for legendaries is bad design, I'd rather earn my legendaries. And this bad luck protection needs improvement.